Should prisons be institutions of retribution or rehabilitation? Brendan Walsh
believes that not enough is being done to reintegrate prisoners back into society.

Brendan Walsh

Why do we put people in prison? Is it a means of
rehabilitation or is it to punish them? Penal theorists have argued about this for
years without reaching a definite conclusion. However none of this changes the fact
that the Irish prison service is in crisis. Mountjoy prison is overcrowded, under-resourced
and menaced by drugs. Suffice it to say, conditions are not conducive to turning
out civic-minded citizens.

But what do we do to re-integrate released prisoners back into the community?
About four out of every five released prisoners go on to commit more offences. We
have career criminals coming out of our prisons. Inmates are released back into a
community which shuns them, without the institutions to care for them in a structured
and lasting way.

Martin Tansey, the county's Principal Probation and Welfare Officer, thinks that
"the primary purpose of prisons has always been containment and not rehabilitation."
On release, he told me, the offender is free once more and the authorities should
not interfere with his/her rights in any way. This applies also to paedophiles and
repeat offenders, he says. There is a corresponding feeling among criminologists
that recidivism is an ugly fact of life. Probation officers are there to assist the
Court in implementing sanctions against the ex-prisoner, especially as regards Community
Service, Mr. Tansey maintains. Their work also involves carrying out pre-sentence
assessments for the courts, supervising offenders who are released conditionally
from prison and providing a counselling service for offenders and their families.
They build up a social history of the person on probation including reports from
the Gardai, social workers and psychologists. They then build up a programme of supervision
and care for the individual. That is the theory, but the extent and effectiveness
of these programmes is another matter. Martin Tansey also has a different view of
prisons and other institutions. He claims that institutionalisation causes recidivism.
Dysfunctional people are institutionalised in prisons and become accustomed to the
life they experience there, up to the point of becoming dependent upon it in some
cases. They will never be "rehabilitated" simply because they do not want
to be. He also thinks that when a person goes into prison for the first time the
barriers of the unknown are broken down. That person will not have the same fear
of incarceration in the future, despite the experience there.

Others do not share this view. In their last Annual Report, the Mountjoy Prison
Visiting Committee consistently argue that prisoners should be taught basic literary
and work skills which would help them secure employment after their release. They
place particular emphasis on community work projects outside the prison, such as
the construction of the community centre near Mulhuddart in North Dublin. Projects
such as this benefit everybody, especially the prisoners who learn valuable skills,
and, most importantly, a greater sense of self-worth because they make a real contribution
to the community. In 1993 everybody who took part in these schemes got a job. The
rate of placement islower now but this is blamed on wider economic factors.
They make the important recommendation that "structured links be made by the
Department of Justice with community based services and half-way houses". The
Committee further adds that some of these services are willing to expand to meet
increasing needs with a view to coming under the authority of the Department of Justice.
However the support and funding of the department has not been offered to them. If
this were to happen it would result in a more unified, cohesive approach to monitoring
of, and care for, the prisoners after their release. However their recommendations
seem to have joined the Whittaker Report and the 5 Year Plan in total obscurity,
just as they predicted.

One valuable community-based service is PACE, a voluntary organisation which was
founded in 1969 for the care and education of male offenders. It runs a hostel at
Priorswood House and a training workshop at Santry with the co-operation of FAS and
CDVEC. PACE provide an information service, putting their residents in touch with
officers in Dublin Corporation who can help them with housing and flats. They help
men with drug histories get in contact with relevant counselling services in Coolmine
and Trinity Court Drug Treatment Centre. Ex-prisoners are re-introduced to living
and working in the community once more, albeit in a slightly institutionalised way.
Sinead Keogh from PACE says that their activities were not very popular in the broader
community and so their fund-raising efforts are usually very low-key. It is a case
of, "Out of sight, out of mind." They do not accept sex offenders or arsonists
because of the likelihood of repeat offence. This leads to the situation that paedophiles
and other known recidivists are presently not adequately looked after when they are
released.

Other half-way houses exist for males but there are none for female offenders. Although
statistics show that the rate of recidivism amongst females is less than their male
counterparts there is a great need for such a service for women. This is made worse
by the fact that many families refuse to have anything to do with women who are given
prison sentences. On their release these women have nowhere to go and can end up
in shelters or, worse still, destitute and on the street.

Brendan Walsh has been a student of Sociology for three years at UCG and has a
particular interest in the theory and practice of the Irish criminal justice system.
He lives in Dublin.